Recounted again and again in after-dinner speeches, cricket club bar sessions and several books, the punchlines of the most celebrated Ashes sledges have become almost as familiar as Bodyline, Bradman’s duck and Botham’s 149 not out.

From the 1980s until the most recent couple of series, the not-especially noble art of sledging was intertwined with Australian dominance.

A parade of England batsmen came to the wicket, not lacking in technique perhaps, but certainly lacking in the cojones to deal with a cordon of moustachioed, uncompromising men making unkind remarks about their parentage, sexuality, masculinity, personal relaxation habits and ability to play the leg-cutter.

Whether it was Graeme Hick being told to “turn the bat over, the instructions are on the other side” or Ian Bell being derided as the “Shermanator” (after a weedy ginger loser in the American Pie film series), England’s Ashes hopefuls seemed forever on the wrong end of not just the results but the repartee as well.

Disappointingly, now that England have the better cricket team, they are, individually and collectively, vowing to steer clear of sledging.

Instead, they will “let the ball do the talking”, “focus on what we are doing and not worry about the opposition” and “execute our performance-destabilising skills in the right areas”.

Sadly only one of those is not a direct quote from an England fast bowler.

Facing an Australian top six that could include such ‘luminaries’ as Phil Hughes, Ed Cowan and Steve Smith, do England not owe it to the crushed Crawleys and humiliated Hicks of recent history to even things up a bit?

A quick perusal of the most famous sledges in Ashes history proved that, while there are occasional plucky comebacks from England, the tide generally flows Australia’s way. Much like the cricket, in fact.

This sledging superiority has been variously attributed to something in the Australian national character, a post-colonial need to get one over the former mother country, a natural by-product of the toughness and competitiveness of the grade cricket, the landscape, the facial hair.

Or maybe it is just that Australia had much better cricketers. It is easier to be the hard man and talk about mental disintegration when you can bring Shane Warne on to bowl and not, say, Alan Mullally.

I asked Steve Finn recently if he would be sledging the Australians this summer and he replied in the negative, saying that “it has gone out of the game a bit these days.”

In an era of computer analysing every ball, playing a treadmill of cricket against the same players – or with them, in Twenty20 franchises – some of the rough-and-tumble has been lost.

This series does not promise a vintage crop of sledges. Many of the principals seem too nice, or at least too professional.

But also, much like our two main political parties, the England and Australian cricket teams seem less polarised, more middle of the road, more alike than they did in any previous era.

In the same way that you might not have liked Norman Tebbit or Neil Kinnock but at least you knew what they stood for, there was no danger of mistaking the bristling aggression of Border and Waugh’s Australians for Gooch and Atherton’s outgunned, hangdog flock of sacrificial lambs.

Blokes like Merv Hughes, and I mean this as a compliment, looked like the sort of guys who would kick your head in for staring at their pint.

The current Australian team, with its fresh-faced and vaguely ineffectual-seeming Eddies and Nathans, training hard, staying positive and hoping to put up a good fight, just seems a bit… English.

Meanwhile England, with her gimlet-eyed Southern Hemisphere kingpins and ruthless organisation, has tried on the garb of the confident sporting dominator and begun to enjoy the fit.

Expect a handsome England win this summer, but probably rather a polite one.